How We Do This
by k.shy
Summary: Karen Page and Frank Castle's love story; takes up after the Punisher is over. I just thought it seems so obvious that they love each other and wanted to give them a chance to show it. The more I work on it, the more I see Karen's backstory and all of the things that happened to her before she moved to New York as important in her current narrative. Any feedback is welcome!
1. Chapter 1

Karen had never thought that it would be so easy to run into people she knew in as big a city as New York. And here she was, waiting at the crosswalk on her way home from work, wishing she had worn flats instead of heels as the sweat made her feet start to slip out of her shoes, her glance caught by a figure in the alley. She turned to see the slow, exhausted steps of a man draped in a dark coat heading away from her. The haircut and the boots, along with the promise of some kind of injury, were unmistakably Frank Castle's.

Bodies began shuffling past her as the walk sign flashed ahead. No one else paid any attention to the alleyway. Karen waited until the crowd had passed her and started toward Frank. She caught him quickly despite the annoyance of her shoes, hearing his panting as she clicked up behind him.

"Frank," she said, not wanting to sneak up on the most dangerous man she had ever known. He stopped, but did not turn. She doubted herself for just a moment. What if it wasn't Frank, but some other freak in an alleyway, in a jacket in July, walking off a bad trip? She reached a tentative hand into the open zipper of her purse as she approached him. "Frank, is that you?"

He turned his face to look at her over his shoulder, his expression somewhere between a cringe and an embarrassed smile. "You always go after creeps in alleyways, Karen?"

She let out a sigh of relief and pulled her hand out of her purse as she walked around to face him. One of his hands was hidden inside his jacket, his arm reaching protectively across his chest, that shoulder drooping just a little. Otherwise, he seemed to be in one piece.

"Are you okay?" she asked.

"Never better. How've you been?"

"What's wrong with your ribs?" she asked. "Broken or bleeding?"

"Why not both?"

She rolled her eyes. "Do you need…"

"You know what Karen," he interrupted, his eyes on the brick wall beside them. "I think I need a cup of coffee. Yeah. And a place to sit and drink it for a couple minutes without someone calling the cops."

His smiled up at her then, wondering. Wondering how far he could push this. How much help he could ask for without overstepping, without her thinking it really was about needing help, without scaring her away.

"My apartment is on the next block," she said. When he didn't move, she added, "I have a Mr. Coffee now, so…" He nodded. She looked over her shoulder down the alley, then linked her arm through his. "It's not far."

…

"Do you want the coffee or the first aid kit first?" Karen asked when she had closed and locked her door behind them.

"I mean, if you've got a kit lying around…" Karen kicked her shoes off by the door and walked quickly to the bathroom and back with the blue box. "You can start the coffee while I do this," Frank said, taking the box and rifling through on her kitchen table. Karen got the filter ready and started spooning the grounds into it, glancing over to see the blood on Frank's hand as he finally pulled it away from his middle. He leaned on the table with the clean hand and picked through the bandages and gauze in the box as she absentmindedly worked on the coffeepot.

"Is that really how you do that?" Frank asked suddenly. Karen hadn't realized he was watching her too.

"What?" she asked, but when she looked down she realized she'd scooped grounds into the pot without the filter.

"Shit, Karen. You like grounds in your coffee?" He got up and walked over to the counter. " _I'll_ make the coffee, if you find me a needle."

"You know you're in my house, right?" she asked, but walked over to the kit anyway. " _Bossy_ ," she added, and then made a point to keep her eyes on the first aid kit until she collected all the suturing materials and some gauze. The coffeepot started to gurgle, and she held out the small pile of items to Frank.

"Thanks," he said, and then headed into the bathroom. Karen leaned her butt against the table and watched him. He didn't close the door the whole way, so she could just see his right shoulder as he slipped off his coat and slowly pulled his Henley off with his left arm. As he threaded the needle, she watched his shoulder, allowing herself to indulge in that small view of him framed by the door. Now, with no one to catch her staring and nothing to busy herself with, she thought about that shoulder. Broad. Solid. She pressed her lips together involuntarily as she imagined pressing them to that shoulder.

Frank grunted, and bent over. Must've dropped the needle. "Son of a bitch," she barely heard him say as he stood up. He still hadn't gotten it threaded.

Karen reflected for a moment: how many times had she seen him vulnerable like this? Hurt, yes. But vulnerable? Accepting her invitation to her apartment. (Was he in her neighborhood on purpose or by luck?) Shirtless in her bathroom. (Not in a hospital gown, not surrounded by bad guys or cops, not fighting for his life.) Ready to stay and drink a cup of coffee with her when he was finished. (If she didn't scare him off first.)

(If he could ever get the damn needle threaded.)

She approached the bathroom. "Struggling?" she asked, poking her head into his view so that they made eye contact in the mirror as he looked up from the small needle in his large, somewhat bloody fingers. He turned, showing her the full extent of the gash over his ribs, and holding out the needle to her. He had already cleaned it well enough. She nodded, sobered a little by the sight of the blood, and took the needles. She smacked the other light switch to add more light to the room, and leaned against the sink. It took her maybe ten seconds to thread the needle.

"Hmmph," Frank said, holding out his hand to take it back. She wondered if she should just do it for him, but gave handed it over. He reached over with his left hand to try to start the stitches, but the gash was in an awkward position for his right hand to be any help at all. Reluctant to let that stop him, he stabbed himself haphazardly, making an uneven start.

"Is that really how you do that?" Karen asked. She shoved her hair behind her ears quickly and reached out for the needle again, taking it from him before he could protest, and got to work. He put his right hand on the back of his head to keep his arm out of the way.

"Where'd you learn this?" he asked.

"Girl Scouts."

He chuckled.

"Who did this to you?" Karen asked, keeping her eyes on her adept hands, trying not to think about the blood.

"Girl Scouts."

"Not funny."

"You didn't like that one?" Frank asked. Karen ignored him. "I stopped a knife fight between a drug dealer and a kid. I didn't kill him," he added before Karen could look up. "I was walking home with a quart of milk, minding my own business, but I heard the kid crying in the alleyway. So I stopped to check, and the guy had this blade, this big son-of-a-bitchin knife up to his ear. Some kind of hunting knife for big game."

"Over-compensating," Karen mumbled. Frank smiled at the wall, then continued.

"I let him take a swipe at me before I knocked him out and told the kid to call the cops."

"Let him?" Karen asked, clearly disbelieving as she tied the suture off. She straightened up then, having bent a bit to see what she was doing better.

"I figured I should make it a little more fair," he said, still smiling. Karen shook her head and turned to wash her hands.

"That should hold. I'm no nurse, so when it hurts like hell later you can blame yourself for not going to the emergency room." She left the water on, and he washed the blood off of his own hands. She grabbed the gauze then and began to tape it over the wound.

"I don't need that," he said, but held his arms up and out of the way as he dried his hands. "Doesn't even hurt."

"I bet." Karen straightened one last time and faced him. She looked up into his eyes for a moment and then at the air over his shoulder. She thought this would be the moment when she would kiss him—perfect, while he was thankful, not in a hurry—but the sight of the blood and the obvious lie put a sour taste in her mouth.

"Are you going to keep doing this?" she asked.

"Doing what?"

She smiled because she felt like she might cry, then swallowed and looked up at him. "I don't want to see you covered in blood anymore. Or limping. Or in a hospital bed."

A moment passed, he nodded and seemed to scan the room for something to say. When his eyes returned to hers and he opened his mouth, she spoke again.

"But I do want to see you," she said.

"Okay." His face softened somehow—the lines were still there, cheekbone, jaw, lips pressed together—but as his voice lowered to a whisper she could see the sadness all over him. "I don't think I can stop, Karen. I'm not looking for trouble anymore. But I can't just walk by when I know I could help somebody. I know you understand that. Because you're the same damn way, Karen. You're the same damn… you just do it with your brain, but I'm not smart enough. I'm not as smart as you Karen so I gotta do it this way. My body is all I got to do good in the world. If I could throw money at problems like these rich bastards do, then I'd do that. But God gave me these skills and this body and I have to do right with what I have."

Karen shook her head just barely, then nodded, her eyebrows scrunching together. She tried to look anywhere but him, but there was so much of him in front of her: his face, his arms hanging defeated at his sides, and she couldn't stand to look at his chest or his bandages, and she had to settle on his face.

"I understand," she said finally. "I wish things could be different." She took a step toward the door, and he just barely raised his arm, touching his fingers to her the crook of her elbow and then immediately dropping them.

"They could be," he said. She saw in his face then that he was scared. This giant man in her bathroom with the knife wound was scared, and the sour taste wasn't gone but it was different, and she closed her eyes and kissed him.


	2. Chapter 2

In the sense that all first kisses are kind of awkward, he could have expected this. The point is that you like the person enough to look past the awkwardness to consider a second kiss at some future point. Frank wasn't sure he'd recover Karen's favor after this one though. Standing shirtless in her bathroom, looking at her and seeing Karen, not thinking of his wife and then thinking about how he wasn't seeing her or thinking of her anymore and sustaining the stabbing guilt that epicentered right around his actual stab wound, Frank botched it. He reached out to her and Karen had gotten on her toes and kissed him, and he had frozen just long enough to require a jumpstart. He jerked backwards, kicked the bathroom door, knocked his shirt into the toilet, and made her feel so bad that _she_ started apologizing to _him_. _Couldn't have done a worse job if I tried_ , he thought to himself later.

For so long, he'd tried not to think of her this way. It was easy at first. Avenging his family kept him focused. His grief was sharp. He never wearied until he was finally finished. But then, even before that… even before that he felt himself pushing Karen out of his mind with the image of his children, of his wife. For the past few months, between the passing of time and his work in the counseling group with Curtis, he had begun to let himself feel more. Feel the pain ebbing, feel the exhaustion, feel rest, feel desire.

Here he was, pulling away from Karen when for so long this was exactly what he wanted.

"I'm sorry," she said, trying to duck around him to leave the suddenly cramped bathroom. "I should never have… I didn't mean…"

"No, Karen. It's okay. It's…" He reached down to pull his shirt out of the toilet by the sleeve and she ran past him out the door. He dropped the sopping wet cotton into the tub and followed her.

"It's not…" he began, but she was already across the room. He started toward her, then turned toward the kitchen, drumming his fingers against his palms. "I can leave if you want, but I did come here for the coffee."

"Yeah, go ahead," she said. "Cups in the cupboard above."

"Cream and sugar?" he asked.

"Yeah," she said, and then realized he was asking if she wanted some, not if she had some. He poured two mugs full, added the cream and sugar to hers, and joined her near her small window to hand it to her.

"Listen." Frank searched for the right words, sipping at the hot, bitter coffee and wishing he had another shirt to put on. "It's not that… you know. It's not that I didn't want to kiss you. It's been so long. And the last time someone kissed me, I didn't kiss her back but I didn't stop her, and it wasn't right to… to let her think I felt the same, even for a moment. And now, hell. The opposite. I'm so out of practice that you kissin' me nearly knocked me out."

"Could've been the blood loss," Karen said. She wondered about this other woman. If not his wife, then who could she be? Was this old news or had Frank met someone recently?

"Nah. That I'm used to. This. You're something different."

Karen put her mug up to her face, hiding a reluctant smile, and took a drink. It was sweeter than she cared for. But it was the first cup that someone had made for her in a long time.

"So. Where does this leave us?" she asked.

"Where do you want it to leave us? You're the boss here."

She chuckled. "Drinking coffee and watching the sunset through a tiny New York window, I guess."

"Fair enough."

"Maybe, ordering some pizza later."

"Sounds good."

"Okay." Karen leaned against the windowsill and looked out. Frank let himself take in her face and the little bit of sunlight catching in her blond hair before he also turned to the window. He could see just a sliver of the sun through the buildings across the street, but the sky above them was turning orange and pink.

"I don't know… um… how to do this," Karen said.

"What do you mean?" he asked, guessing at her next words.

"I mean, how do we do this?"

"What, drink coffee? You never drink coffee before?"

"You've just… you've been through so much…"

"How do we do this, as in you, New York's up-and-coming journalist, and me, a convicted murderer?"

"No." She smiled uncomfortably at the pane of glass in front of her as she sighed.

"Me, with all my widower baggage, and you-"

"That's not what I mean."

"It's a good question, though, Karen," he said, seeing that he had the right hunch. "I mean, I've been married, I've been a father."

"I've got baggage too. Not the same way, but…" He could see in her face that it was time to stop teasing her, that maybe her concerns were deeper than what he was able to understand right now. She put the coffee cup down on the windowsill, crossed her arms. He might not have noticed the way she seemed to fold into herself a little if she didn't normally stand so tall.

"Okay." He put his coffee cup down too. "Okay. Karen, uh… How we do this is going to be the same way everyone does. Or everyone who does a good job of it. We're going to figure it out as we go. Unscripted, you know? Honest. We got a lot more to figure out than most people maybe. But that's how we do this." She nodded at him, stepped a little closer, and he reached his left arm around her. Her hands slid behind him and he pressed his lips to her forehead as he felt her relax a little bit. Frank took a deep breath, smelling her hairspray and the coffee, rubbed his thumb back and forth across her shoulder blade.

"Yeah," he said. "That's how we do this."


	3. Chapter 3

"I should get going," Frank said, pulling away from Karen. She reluctantly loosened her grasp on him, letting her fingers graze his ribs.

"You could stay the night," she said, shrugging. "I can wash your shirt with a load of mine. And the pizza offer still stands."

"I will look pretty trashy in a jacket with no shirt, huh?" he said, smirking out the window. "But I took over enough of your evening. And I have to get up early tomorrow, too, you know. I got a new job."

"That's great! Where?"

"There's a demolition company based a couple blocks away from here. We tear down condemned buildings. It's no award winning newspaper, but I keep myself out of trouble over there. Yeah. Well, mostly."

"I'm glad," Karen said, pushing her hair behind both ears. "You've had enough trouble for one lifetime."

"Yeah." Frank turned, taking both of their empty coffee cups to the sink and rinsing them. While Karen found his shirt in the bedroom and put it in a plastic bag for him, he retrieved his jacket and pulled it gingerly on, zipping it up most of the way. Only the top of his chest was showing. If she didn't know he was shirtless, Karen might not notice that he wasn't wearing a shirt underneath.

A moment passed where the two looked up at each other at the same time, both wanting to speak but seeing the other person's mouth open, waiting. Frank took a step toward her, and they both smiled briefly.

"You go first," he said.

"Do you have a phone?" she asked.

"I'm a modern guy, Karen. Yes I have a phone."

"Good." She turned to her table and grabbed a notepad, scribbled on it, ripped it out. "Then you can call me." She reached out to hand it to him, grabbing his fingers as she placed it in his palm. "This week. Any day after five."

He chuckled. "Yes ma'am."

"Okay," she said, pulling her hand back. But he didn't let go.

"Can I get a second try?" he asked, stepping toward her, hands clasped. She nodded, feeling her face begin to burn, sure that she was blushing and knowing that he noticed by the way he smirked at her. He placed a kiss on her cheek gentler than anyone could have guessed New York's infamous Punisher would be capable of, before pulling back to look her in the eyes again. She didn't wait this time, kissing him before he could lean in so slowly again.

How to describe the right kiss, besides to say that this time it was right? After waiting, after tragedy after disaster after comedic fiasco, finally it was right. Karen knew it even though Frank tilted his head too soon, brushing his nose against her, forehead to forehead.

"I'll call you," he said, and let go of her hand as he exited. Karen watched him until the door clicked shut almost imperceptibly after him.

She smiled to herself, but got busy pulling out leftover Thai food from the fridge. She opened the container, smelled the probably-too-old food, and tossed it into the garbage. She pushed some yogurt aside to find some salami and cheese. She put together a sandwich and placed it, open faced, in the oven to heat it up. As the cheese melted and the bun began to toast, Karen let herself think about Frank.

The problem was, she was afraid if she let herself start, she wouldn't be able to stop. She figured that this would be difficult for Frank. The love of his life had died tragically, along with their children, in a conspiracy that hinged on Frank's time overseas. No amount of time could heal those wounds, and she wondered if she could ever be enough under these circumstances. Would he compare her to his deceased wife? Had he already? Did she pass the test or was she taking it right now? It was difficult to parse out.

But it wasn't worth parsing out, at least not like this: alone in her apartment, ruining what should feel like a victory by thinking too hard about another person's thoughts. She returned to her sandwich, which had browned around the edges. Setting herself up at the table with a glass of pink Moscato and a paper plate, she pulled her blouse out from her pencil skirt. Untucked, relaxed, she dug in.

It had been a while since she'd been in a relationship. Longer than she cared to think about but not so long that she doubted herself. Did she count Matt? Barely, she thought. They had barely gotten a chance to know each other when his side-gig got in the way. _The mask or the chick?_ she asked herself, and then shook her head. _His selfishness_. It wasn't the vigilante thing that caused the problem. Clearly, it seemed like Karen had developed a thing for those types, even though she didn't know Matt Murdock moonlighted as the Devil of Hell's Kitchen until after their brief… what? They didn't even make it to the level of comfort that a few dates bring before their puppy love came to a clumsy halt at the feet of Matt's annoyingly Catholic obsession with redeeming himself.

Frank had a redemption thing, too, though. Karen found herself arguing internally as she ate her sandwich, frowning at her tabletop _. It was different. He had guilt but it wasn't personal. Frank wasn't against the world, but he was prepared to scour it for the revenge he needed. Or, the justice. The peace his family deserved._

Karen finished her sandwich, dusted the crumbs off of the table, and tipped back her wine glass. There was a lot to think about, but after all she was tired. And happy, still. She put it wine glass in the sink next to the coffee cups—the two coffee cups, together in her sink, which made her smile—before taking a long deserved shower.


	4. Chapter 4

"Who sent these?" Karen asked, holding the tag of a small potted flower bunch.

"Some admirer, I don't know," Ellison said as he walked past her out the door. "Don't go rubbing it in our faces."

Karen didn't hear him. She was staring at the words scrawled on the small label. _I didn't forget about Holly Lane_. As the back of her hand brushed the blue and white wildflowers, Karen's heart began to beat in her ears. Her breath came a little shorter, her vision restricted to the small blue petals until they were all she could see…

Standing on the shoulder of the road. The morning sun too bright and not warm yet at that hour. Karen's bare legs with goosebumps and scratches from the brush and the wildflowers she had stumbled backward into. The blue flowers burned into the wood of her mind. The pulling in her neck as she tried to look up but could not take her gaze away from the wildflowers at her feet, and the final snapping feeling when she wrenched her vision back to her brother's car: intercepted by a tree trunk. Totaled. Crunched. Shriveled metal, broken glass. Skid marks. Leaves. Sunlight. Blood. Shriveled skin. Broken bones. Her brother's sheet-covered silhouette leaning face forward on the steering wheel.

"Forgot my keys," Ellison said, but Karen did not hear him over the sirens and the deafening sound of the breeze through the new spring leaves. "Karen? Hey, Karen!"

Like a bullet Karen shot back into the present moment. Her office. New York. She jumped away from the flowers as though they had burned her.

"Are you okay?" he asked, frozen over his desk drawer.

"Who sent these?" she asked again.

"I don't know, why? Is it a threat?" He reached for his phone. "I'll call the cops."

"No! Not a bomb threat or anything," Karen said. She became increasingly aware of her body in that space. Her breathing too loud. Her back sweating through her dress. She swiped the files she had been working on into her purse, and threw it over her shoulder, almost running toward the door. She left the plant on her desk. Thinking better of it, she turned around, grabbed it with one hand, and carried it out with her.

Out in the street, she didn't see Frank leaning against the wall by the entrance before she bumped into him. Even then, she nearly kept going, not realizing who he was until he spoke.

"Careful Karen," he said. "What's the hurry?"

"Shit," she said. "I forgot. I'm sorry, I forgot about our date."

"It's okay, I wasn't waiting long. But those aren't from me, sorry. Guess I'll bring flowers next time." He looked at her, waiting for her words to contradict her image: sweating, panting, hair awry, face pink, eyes brimming, a potted weed in one hand spilling dirt onto the sidewalk. He waited for her to say she was okay.

Karen was waiting for her thoughts to make sense. She felt like she was in a burning house trying to push all the smoke back into the walls. Instead of an explanation, all she could say was "I have to go."

"Whoah, Karen, what's wrong?"

Frank circumvented her, keeping her from walking away. She was looking at the pavement, shaking her head, shaking her head, shaking her head.

He put his fingertips as gently as he could on her shoulder and whispered. "Let me take you home." Karen's head stopped shaking. She closed her eyes. Frank put his hand on her back, guiding her to his car.

…

Frank shut the door behind them and locked it. He followed Karen into her apartment, dropping the plant on the countertop.

"Okay, Karen," he said, sitting on the coffee table in front of her couch as she leaned her elbows on her knees. "Talk to me."

"I don't even know where to start," she said. Her voice was but a croak. She thought the tears she'd been holding in her eyes had retreated back inside of her, but when she sat down, every muscle holding tension relaxed. She was home, she was tired, she was on her couch, Frank was here. She was safe. She took a shuddering breath and rubbed her face in her hands.

"Start at the beginning." He tried to catch her eye, but she was trying to keep from sobbing. "Start at the end. Hell, start here. What are you thinking right now Karen?"

"Notoriety is a bitch," she said, with a humorless chuckle that betrayed a gasp for breath.

"Got too many admirers, Page?"

"Not an admirer."

"So a critic?"

She shook her head again. "I don't know. The card didn't say from who."

"Does it say anything?" Frank turned his head toward the counter where the blue and white flowers sat. Karen grabbed his hands, pulling his attention back to her.

"It doesn't matter," she said.

"Are you saying that to turn me off of this conversation or because you really believe it? Don't kid yourself, Karen. Clearly it matters to you. Which means it matters to me."

"It's just… it's so much, Frank. This is all so much. And I've never talked to anyone about it."

"Is it about a story you're chasing? You know you can tell me anything. And it's not breaking confidentiality, because technically Frank Castle is dead, right?"

"No. No… it's about… Frank, there's a lot of things that you don't know about me."

Finally, the tears found the weak link through which they could escape, and a break in Karen's voice signaled their arrival. As two hot streaks poured down both cheeks, Frank pulled Karen's head toward his shoulder, rubbing his fingers in her hair. _This only makes it worse,_ Karen though but could not say through the waves of sobs that now escaped her, breathing in the smell of Frank through his t-shirt and knowing at the same time that this only made it better.


	5. Chapter 5

Wine glasses sat empty on the coffee table. The open window allowed a cool rush of air from the moonlit fire escape, inviting goose bumps onto Karen's arms. She lay on the carpet with her back against the couch, an elbow propping her up. As one hand idly pulled at the green fibers in the ugly, secondhand rug, the fingers of her other hand wrestled with Frank's. His were bigger, with callouses in strange places: along the side of a knuckle here, in what should have been a soft spot there, peeling open a little near the base of his palm. Karen used her one-handed exploration of Frank's hand to help her focus, to forget the heaviness in her mind and chest.

It helped to talk to someone who has also lost. Karen's grief still felt like a ragged hole somewhere inside of her, and she was afraid that sharing it would only exacerbate Frank's own heartache.

"You don't need to protect me from your pain, Karen," Frank told her when she admitted that she was holding back. "If anyone gets it, I do. And talking about it helps. I'm not just feeding you that support group crap. It really does help."

"I've already talked about it," she said. "In expensive, uncomfortable couches at therapists' offices, in bars where I got too drunk with friends and dates and… some strangers, into the bottom of beer bottles, in my parents' house… My parents and I talked for weeks about all the things we missed about him, trying to keep him alive by talking about him constantly. We talked so much about it that I began to get sick of him, like I did when he was alive and would start to annoy me."

"But you haven't talked about it on your apartment floor, with me."

"Why are we laying on the floor?"

"Keep you grounded. Feel it under you, yeah? We talk ourselves back to when and where it happened, but ninety percent of your body is reminding you that you're still here."

So she indulged in this idea of his. She got started, letting him hold her hand before she realized she would need to squeeze it at intervals during the painful act of telling.

Her brother's accident. The memory that the flowers took her back to so vividly, so uncontrollably. The fear in that. The fear in reliving it again. The fear in admitting how much it affected her.

The doubts she had about the police report. Her brother didn't drink and drive. He wasn't out with friends the night he died. The implications of carelessness that didn't fit with the brother she knew.

"It was like these police officers were gaslighting me, saying that… that everything I knew about my brother, about who he was… just wasn't true. Or that every personality trait he had came with loopholes and exceptions."

"Do you think people just are who they are?" Frank asked.

"What?"

"Do you think people are all predictable? Or, that who you are predetermines… how you act under certain circumstances?"

"No, I mean… people are _full_ of… surprises. And secrets. That's why I'm a journalist, but…"

"So you don't think your brother had secrets?"

"I knew his secrets." Karen had never spoken this aloud before, and it startled her to hear the words coming out of her own mouth.

Frank couldn't help but half-smile. "Why are you looking at me shocked like I'm the one who said that and not you?" he asked.

"I guess… I've always thought I knew him better than anyone, but until I said it like that, to another person… I didn't realize how completely stupid that sounds."

"Hey, it's not stupid."

"Yes, it is. How could I think that my brother would really tell his little sister… or that he was dumb enough to leave a bread trail leading me to his… his secrets, his inner life, all his secret shit?" She ran her hand through her hair, pulling a little on purpose—punishing herself, or distracting herself from a surge of tears.

"You aren't stupid, Karen." Frank reached for the hand she pulled out of her hair and pressed its knuckles solemnly against his lips. "You can't beat yourself up like this. Everybody has secrets. But if anyone knew your brother's, my money's on you."

"God," she said, pulling her hand over her belly and rolling a little so that she was on her back, staring at the ceiling, "what if he… it could've been…"

"You have to stop, Karen. You'll drive yourself crazy if you try to imagine all the secrets you might not have known about."

"Yeah but only one matters, doesn't it?" she said, turning her head sharply toward him. "The one that got him killed." Frank nodded slowly. "I just thought… that I knew him because I didn't have any secrets of my own yet. Real secrets, life or death secrets."

"Life or death, huh?"

"That's part of that whole _things you don't know about me_ package."

"Your life or death, or someone else's?" he asked.

"My life or his," Karen said, nodding as she pressed her lips tightly together, one horror from her past giving way to a whole other memory. Frank reached out his hand to her cheek, thumb tracing across her cheekbone, leaving her hand free to find his ribs over his t-shirt. "It's nothing like your death toll," she said, her jaw set like stone. "But I've killed more than one man who deserved it."

"When?" he asked.

"Last summer," she said. "Before I met you. The Devil of Hell's Kitchen had already saved me once, but… I was kidnapped and taken to this warehouse and… no Devil in sight. He laid a gun on the table between us, like he was teasing me. This guy, a big cog in the machine making my life a living nightmare here, taunted me with this gun and I was sure… I was sure it couldn't be loaded. I thought, a criminal like this… someone who has already taken so many blatant risks and public attempts at my life… can't be stupid enough to put a loaded gun in my reach. It was cruel. If I grabbed it and it wasn't loaded, I was dead. If I didn't grab it…"

"But it was loaded."

Karen nodded. "The idiot's phone started ringing and… it was easy. It was easy to pick it up and I looked into his eyes and heard everything he said about killing my family, going after my friends, all of it replaying in my head, and it was easy… Frank, it was easy!"

And again she was crying, curling into Frank, all the more embarrassed because this time they were laying on the floor together. She felt more than a little pathetic as he shushed her like a child but she couldn't stop sobbing.

"I pulled the trigger seven times. I shot him seven times and it was easy. It shouldn't be easy to take another person's life," she cried. Frank snaked his arms around her, pulling her tightly against him and pressing his mouth into her hair.

"It shouldn't be easy. You're right, Karen. It shouldn't be easy but the truth of it is that when you're staring down the barrel at someone who you know deserves it, someone who really should be dead and you have the power to make that happen… Karen, how can you not? Especially in self-defense. It was you or him, Karen. Right? If you didn't shoot him you wouldn't be here. It's easy to pick yourself. You have to pick yourself in a situation like that, or… or… You gotta choose to live."

After a few minutes, Karen felt the shaking in her chest start to subside. She let go of the bunches of Frank's shirt that she had been holding so tightly in her hands and relaxed a little, resting her head on his arm.

"Was that when you starting packing?" he asked. She snorted.

"Way before that," she said.

"So he wasn't your first."

She shook her head. "The first was that summer my brother died."


	6. Chapter 6

"I don't want to talk about it any more tonight," Karen said. "I'm tired, and to be honest, it's just too much to give up everything all at once. Obviously I trust you, but… I feel like if I empty myself out I'll never refill."

"I get it," Frank said. "We can get back to it. Let's call it a night."

"I didn't say that," Karen said, reaching around to hold the back of his neck. "Don't leave," she whispered.

"Okay," he whispered back. "But let's not sleep on the floor."

They got up and Karen led him by the hand toward the bedroom.

"I'll sleep on the couch." He snagged as though he had gotten caught on thin air.

"We don't have to sleep together to… well, sleep together, in the same bed I mean."

Frank searched the floor for the response he wanted to give her.

"I think we're there by now, Frank."

"I'm not ready yet," he said, his voice coming from the back of his throat, his fingers limp in her hand. Karen nodded.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't think about it like that." She pushed away thoughts of the last woman he would have shared a bed with and the ages of lonely nights he must have spent since. "Goodnight." She let go of him and turned to open her bedroom door, regretting her instinct to give him space. _No time left for a goodnight kiss_ , she thought as she slowly walked in and shut it almost closed, leaving a few inches between the door and the jamb… _Unless he initiates…_

But Frank let his head fall to his chest, rubbed the back of his neck, and turned to lay himself quietly on the couch. Inside he felt the bitter throb. He listened as Karen moved around her room, waiting for her to be still. He wished things could be different. Frank wished he could have a clean slate, a lighter load. Karen deserved to be with someone who could be with her one hundred percent, and Frank was splintered in so many places. Pieces of him were in the suburbs and in the park. He had left something of himself overseas. And what was left of him, everything that was trying to find peace on Karen's couch while she slept alone in the other room, was vibrating with a need for purpose, action to keep from falling apart. His sleepless eyes roamed the room, landing on the flowers sitting on her countertop.

His chest became hot and he thought about the threat that those flowers posed. There were still vast fissures in his understanding of the past, but more important were the twisting questions about the flowers. Where the came from, what they meant, whether Karen was in danger. He glanced over at Karen's room, and, seeing no movement, got up and borrowed her laptop. With the glare in his face the only light in the room, Frank settled into the couch again and started by looking for newspaper articles: Vermont. A few years back. Drunk driving accident. Last name: Page.

…

Karen took a few moments thinking about what to wear to bed. She was thinking that she shouldn't wear anything she wouldn't normally wear, because she wanted Frank to change his mind and come to her room, but didn't want to look like she expected it. But she was also thinking that something about pajamas felt embarrassing, like she should be sleeping in something sexy. Or naked. Or in her day clothes, like Frank apparently was. Before she could think too hard about it she called the whole question silly and put on her normal old t-shirt and shorts.

She had told him more than she planned to. Considering that she had planned to tell him nothing, and then to quell the flood before it swept the two of them away into this hazy place where so much hung on the air between them, Karen could only wrinkle her nose at herself and wonder when that haze would clear. The wine didn't help.

Once she laid her head on the pillow, she realized that she was searching for distraction. She wanted Frank beside her, even if he made her heart ache and race at the same time, because there was something she did not want to think about. And of course, she stared at the ceiling in the dim light from her cracked curtain and thought heartily about that thing. The flowers. The note. The likely suspects. The danger they posed. So rather than sleep, she formulated. Her mind was a corkboard of faces and red string connections, maps and arrows and circles, sticky notes and action plans. By morning, she was ready to investigate. As though the night before had purged her of emotions, Karen greeted the sun warmly, confident in herself.

When she walked out, dressed in her usual pencil skirt and blouse, Frank was sitting at the island. He poured her a cup of coffee, smiling with his eyes.

"Morning," he said. "Sorry I'm not as fresh as you."

"You should start packing a bag," she said. "Since you're always in need of new clothes in this apartment."

"Guess I should," he said into his mug, glad that she was already ready to joke about the fiasco of their first kiss.

Karen sat down next to him, sipping her drink. They sat in silence for a few minutes, shoulders touching.

"I wish I could stay," he said. "But I got something to do today."

"It's okay," she said. "I have—"

"Work," he finished for her. "I noticed the uniform."

"Mmm. Yeah."

"I'll see you tomorrow, if that's okay."

"I won't forget this time," Karen said, standing and pulling her purse off of the back of her chair. They walked to the door together and down to the street.

"Headed that way?" Frank asked, and she nodded. "Okay. I'll see you tomorrow then." He hugged her loosely, and Karen planted a kiss on his cheek. She looked at his face and burst into a smile when she realized he was looking at her through his eyelashes.

"Anytime you wanna drink coffee in silence," she said. "Let me know. Makes waking up so early feel easy."

"You got it," he said. Karen turned and started to walk toward her office, with plans to walk out her shoes that day. First the office, then the florist's, and wherever that might lead her next.


	7. Chapter 7

"Yeah, I have to come into the city anyway tomorrow to pick up a load of parts."

"Okay, great, Mr. Henshaw. I'll meet you at Josie's, then."

"Sounds good, Miss Hart."

Karen hung up her phone and walked up to the bar. "Hey hon," Josie said. "What can I do for you?"

"Can I use the back room tomorrow night?" Karen asked. "I have someone I need to meet in private.

…

"Thanks again for meeting me, Mr. Henshaw. I know you're probably really busy."

"It's no problem at all," he said, sipping from his glass of scotch. The short man was around sixty, his white t-shirt grimy and tight over his round tummy. Karen was glad there were only chairs and tables in Josie's back room, because this man might not fit into a booth seat. He pulled out a pack of cigarettes and looked questioningly at Karen.

"Go ahead," she said.

He lit one and spoke again with the cigarette between his fingers throwing a thin stream of smoke into the orange overhead light. "I only read our local newspaper, but if one of these big fancy New York papers wants to hear about a boring small town story, who am I to say no?"

"Well, it's not exactly the New York Post, but our readers will still appreciate it. So, I was wondering if you could start by telling me about the accident on Holly Lane. You picked up the car after the investigation, right?"

"Yep. What was left of it."

"And did you see any evidence of foul play?"

"Well," he said, glancing conspicuously at her notebook on the table in front of him, "I'm just a mechanic, not a cop, so I wasn't in charge of any evidence or anything."

"I understand, Mr. Henshaw. I was just wondering if you noticed anything off, anything strange about the car."

"No, can't say I did. Just a bad accident." Karen nodded.

"I read in the paper that the driver was drunk. Do you know how he crashed the car?"

"I don't remember much, but I think he sped too fast around the curve. Poor kid probably didn't even see the tree trunk he hit."

"Did you know him?" she asked.

He shook his head. "Heard he was a good kid, but… I never met him."

"Were there rumors around town at the time?" she asked. "Did you hear about him before he was killed?"

"Not before, only after. Just normal stuff. Everybody talking about what a damn tragedy it was."

"And, after you towed the car, what happened to it?"

"I towed it to the junk yard, but I believe they destroyed it there. It was so wrecked that nothing was salvageable."

 _Convenient,_ Karen thought. "I see."

"Sorry I can't tell you anything more interesting about it," he said. "But like I said, I don't think there's anything there to tell."

"I understand. Thank you for your time Mr. Henshaw. I appreciate you coming out of your way to talk to me."

"That it, then?" he asked, his shoulders falling an inch as he relaxed visibly. Karen noticed a light sheen of sweat on his forehead in the dingy light. As they both stood to leave, Karen took her chance.

"Do you come into the city often, Mr. Henshaw?"

"Once a month, usually," he said. "I haul my load of parts back home because its cheaper to buy here and ship myself."

"Ever stop anywhere else? Or bring your family in?"

"Nah." He put his hands in his pockets and looked quizzically at Karen. "Sometimes I take some things home for the wife. She likes the salami from this deli in Hell's Kitchen."

"Do you ever take your wife flowers?" Karen asked. "There's a florist nearby here too that sells wildflowers."

Henshaw's face slipped into a red mask. "Why are you asking me about flowers? Don't think I didn't recognize that towhead the moment I saw you, Page. Are you the bitch who sent those damn flowers? Like I need a reminder?"

"I didn't send any flowers, Mr. Henshaw."

"Well you sure as hell look like the kind of stuck up, high and mighty, spoiled kid who would send a man a threat in a bouquet."

"What threat? What did the note with the flowers say?" But the man acted like he didn't hear her. He pulled the dangling cigarette from his lip and pointed it at her.

"Just like your brother with the superiority complex, stomping around like he's better than everyone. People like you, they get what they deserve. _He_ did." And he flicked the cigarette toward her, making her jump back a little.

"You knew my brother?" she hissed. "How did you know him?" He turned and started to walk toward the door, and Karen jerked into motion, following at his elbow. "The newspaper story is bullshit, and you know that. Mr. Henshaw, do you know the truth or are you too comfortable in the lie to even want to figure it out?"

"Stop with these god damn questions!" he roared, turning toward her with his arms thrown up in exasperation, smacking across her collarbone. She reared back a few feet, but could tell he hadn't meant to hit her. They stood a few feet apart, panting as they glared at each other.

"I won't stop until I have answers."

"You'll be better off without them, believe me." He wiped his nose on his wrist and left.

Karen collected her things, glad she hadn't needed to use most of them: the gun in her purse, the pepper spray in the pocket of her pleated skirt, the knife taped under the only chair in the room… spending time with Frank had given her new ideas and paranoia that left her imagining every possible situation that she might need to get out of. She sat down for a moment on the chair, tallying up their conversation in her head.

He had rehearsed the information from the newspaper because he knew something about the truth, but didn't trust himself enough to keep it from slipping out. Either he was guilty of something or scared, but Karen got the feeling that he wasn't trying to get away with something. Instead he was nervous. A pawn in the grand scheme of it all. There was someone he was afraid of.

Buy why had the flowers come from his shop's number if he hadn't sent them? Surely this man was not the criminal mastermind who could feign surprise and fear so easily, lying to Karen about receiving flowers himself. But his flowers contained an outright threat, by the sounds of it. Unless the note with his flowers was as ambiguous as Karen's, and his fear or guilt drew him to a sinister conclusion.

Karen stood up and brushed dust from her skirt, chewing on the side of her cheek as she entered the street once more. Drizzling rain just barely visible beneath the orange street lamp, the night felt cooler now than it had when Karen had got here. Planning her route to a main street to catch a cab as she walked intently down the sidewalk, a scuffling sound interrupted her thoughts.

Ahead a dark alleyway echoed quietly with increasing noise. Karen quieted her footsteps and approached, slipping a hand into her purse. She stopped for a moment just before she reached the alleyway, a big steady breath travelling quietly through her pursed lips, before peeking around the corner.

By the white t-shirt and bald head she could make out Henshaw, pinned against the concrete wall of the next building by a hulking figure in black. The two men were struggling, although was the only one panting. Karen hid herself behind the corner.

"Let me go, you son of a bitch," he rasped. Karen heard the way his voice twisted at the end, as though he'd been choked. She could not hear what the other man said, but Henshaw spoke louder this time. She wondered if she should turn the other way and just call the cops. "Fuck you. And fuck that other bitch, too." He wheezed in pain, perhaps from a punch.

"I'm not telling you shit. I got nothing to tell!"

"Keep your voice down," growled the other man. As Karen realized this was no mugging, she froze with her back against the wall and her hand gripping the gun in her purse.

"Terrible accident. Drunk driver. Kid had all this potential and the whole town cried about it. That's all I know."

"That's not all you know, Henshaw! You towed the car away after they took the kids body out on a stretcher. You changed the oil in it two days before that. You took the car to the dump and had it destroyed. You, Henshaw. Tell me what nobody else knows. What'd you see when you took it away?"

"Nothin'!" he yelled, but his voice cracked just a little.

"What did you do to it to make the kid crash?"

"I didn't do nothin'," he cried. "I didn't do nothing. I just did my job. I-"

"Horseshit!"

Karen snapped out of her trance as she recognized the second voice, just before she heard a horrible crack rip through the alley, followed swiftly by Henshaw's pitiful groaning.

"Frank!"

Karen barreled around the corner to see Frank's head whip toward her. "Let him go," she ordered. Frank held Henshaw against the wall with one hand as he faced her. Henshaw's head lolled forward, chin against his chest.

"Karen, this guy has information."

"I know who the hell he is, Frank. But he didn't send the flowers."

"You really think he doesn't know anything?"

"I don't want to find out this way!" Karen said. "Let him go. Now, Frank."

"You sure?" he asked, but Karen's steely eyes betrayed no uncertainty. Frank took his hand from the man's shoulder and stepped out of his way as he stumbled forward. Henshaw didn't look at Karen as he shuffled quickly out into the street.

"Did you follow me here?" Karen asked.

"Are you mad at me?" Frank raised his eyebrows at Karen and then chuckled to himself. "You're mad at me, when you're the one out here running around like the only sheriff in town."

"I can take care of myself!"

"Yeah, okay. I know you can. But don't you know that a woman walking around alone in a neighborhood like this is like a walking target for trouble?"

"Well if you didn't follow me here, then you what you didn't know wouldn't hurt you!"

"But it might've hurt you! Karen, I chased three guys away from here who saw you out that bar's window and followed you to the building."

Karen's eyebrows wrinkled briefly, betraying that she hadn't noticed them.

"And Henshaw's no angel, either. You know he did time in the can for assault and battery?"

"Yeah, thirty years ago," Karen said defensively. "I knew that, and I was prepared, and I judged correctly that he wasn't dangerous."

"Perfect, well, I judged correctly that he knows something that he doesn't want to divulge, and you lost your own primary source by making me let him go!"

"I told you I don't want to know anything that I have to get through violence. I was prepared to defend myself if I had to but I want to do this the right way. And I want to do it alone."

"I thought I could help," Frank said, a note of apology in his voice that Karen ignored.

"Did I ask for your help? Consider that he'll never talk to me again now that you've broken his nose! I could have tried to talk to him again once I know more but… damn it, Frank."

"Alright, yeah, I'm sorry. I'm sorry I ruined what you were brewing here but you should have let me in on it! I could help you! And, Karen…You know I have to keep you safe… I _have to_."

"And why is that, Frank?" she asks, venom dripping from her words.

"Karen, I-"

"Why? Because we kissed? Because we're… we're seeing each other? Or because you have a savior complex now? You couldn't save your family so you have to save me even when I don't need it! Or want it!"

The man in front of her shrunk, his silhouette crumpling against the low light behind him. "You're… the only thing left in my life to… to hold onto."

"Well I'm not a thing, Frank! Not a thing to hold on to, not a thing to protect, not a thing to use or put on a shelf."

Some small spark of fight came back into him. "I know that! That's not what I meant, okay? God damn it—I mean, I _know that_ , Karen."

"Great, glad we're on the same page. But we're not getting in the same cab." Karen turned around and hailed a taxi, getting in without looking back.

He didn't like himself like this. Frank liked to go toe to toe, to yell and bang around the house and let his wife do the same when they were together. But ever since she had died, and after everything he had done after, he couldn't stand to fight anymore. He was tired. And Karen was right. He wondered when he would go back to normal. He knew Karen was like him—or like he used to be. She needed a partner who would give back everything she dished out. Karen was a force of nature, and Frank… well, Frank felt like nothing he did or said was natural anymore. He wondered if he would ever go back to his old normal, if he ever even could. He pulled his hood over his head and walked home.


	8. Chapter 8

Karen spent the next few days buried in research at the office. She didn't hear from Frank. Imagining him waiting outside her building, she found herself thinking of him as an annoying watchdog. But then, each evening when Ellison finally kicked her out, she felt a throbbing disappointment that Frank wasn't there. She didn't need to be checked up on. They both knew that… but then she would reel herself back into anger. _If he didn't want me to see him, I wouldn't see him,_ she thought, and then got mad all over again at the thought of him not trusting her. Babying her. And God, that set her off.

She walked home in a huff. Back straight, breath streaming irritably through her nose, sweat trickling down her back even though the sun had just set and the night's cool air had begun to breeze through the streets.

Just before she crossed the street toward her apartment, a flash of color caught her eye a few floors up. Her kitchen window. It was hard to see clearly from so far below but the flowerpot was unmistakable. They had the be the wilting blue wildflowers that she knew she had left on the counter, not the windowsill.

 _Put the flowers in the window if you find something._ Franks words from so long ago came back to her now, and for a moment her chest flared with heat. "If he thinks he can make up with information…" she mumbled as she entered the crosswalk. How could he get into her apartment anyway? Unless it was not Frank who had put them there.

Karen reached into her purse for her keys, transferring them to her left hand as she entered the building and returning her right hand to her purse. She took the stairs up, taking her time to stay calm and think about her plan, should she need to get out quick. _Stick to the kitchen,_ she thought, _or near the fire escape. No where else in the apartment until I'm sure it's empty_.

She gently tried her doorknob before sighing in relief to see that it was locked. Maybe she had imagined the flowers, or seen someone else's new window decorations and not her own. She unlocked the door, not yet freeing her right hand from her gun, and entered slowly. Karen kept her eyes up and forward, closing the door behind her.

Acting normal, she dropped her keys with a clatter on the countertop—no plant. A glance at the window above her sink confirmed what she'd seen in the street. The browning flowers were sitting there, right against the window.

"Hello?" she called, hoping it was Frank after all, letting an irritable note carry through her voice. No one answered as she walked toward her living room toward her fire escape. She leaned heavily against that windowsill, remembering how she and Frank had stood here just the other day. Pulling up the blind but keeping her eyes on her bedroom door, she waited a moment, poised like a cat, trying to look relaxed with her purse still over her shoulder and her finger still hovering on top of the safety. For just a second, she bit her cheek. If there was no one here, she would feel silly for letting her heart race like this. But she wasn't one for taking chances.

And she was usually right.


	9. Chapter 9

The door to Karen's bedroom slowly began to open, and she saw a dirty white sneaker toe pushing it from the bottom corner. From behind the door emerged wide leg jeans, legs planted comically far apart, and a black zip up sweatshirt with the name of a high school—one of Karen's high school's rivals in sports. The intruder held a pistol with both pale white hands. Leveling it at Karen as she became fully visible, she flinched almost imperceptibly as the door gently bumped the wall. Her glasses were thick, her highlighted hair curled and brushed out. Karen stayed absolutely still, her eyes widening in shock.

"Who are you?" she asked.

"Your research didn't lead you back to me, Karen Page?" she asked with the authority of a vice principle and the tone she might use on a child. "I guess you're not the star journalist they say you are."

"What do you want?"

"I want you to put your hands up," said the intruder, taking a hand off her gun to quickly swipe at her glasses, pushing them farther up her nose.

"I don't have anything," Karen lied, feigning innocence.

"I don't care," she said. "Hands up."

Karen pulled her hand out of her purse but kept the strap on her shoulder. She held her hands at shoulder height.

"You're from Vermont," Karen said. "So you must know I've been researching my brother's death. And you're from the town next to the one I grew up in. Did you know my brother?"

"I don't need to hear your deductions, Sherlock."

"Are you going to hold me at gunpoint and not tell me what you want?" Karen asked. The other woman took a few duck-footed steps forward.

"Maybe all I want is for a certain meddling journalist to be found dead in her apartment," she said, and Karen's face burned.

"I'll stop investigating," Karen blurted. "I'll drop it all, burn my notes. Nobody knows I'm looking into my brother's death, because it's not for the paper. It's for me, just for me."

"Bullshit. Somebody else has been nosing around, too. Broke a certain mutual friend's nose."

"I told him to stop, too. Once he sees that I don't care about the case anymore, he'll give it up."

"So you're saying maybe I should have sent the flowers to him instead of you? Those flowers were supposed to scare you away, not invite you back into this mess. And you didn't even take care of them! Did you water them at all? They're already brown… And I have to say, I didn't find a boyfriend when I looked into you this year. Is he that new? Or does he have a secret to hide, too?"

"The flowers did scare me," Karen told her, "but I've stopped running away from the things that I'm afraid of and started walking towards them."

The woman across from her emitted a voiceless laugh, barely more than a breath through her teeth. "I thought you were stupid," she said. "Without the good sense your parents raised you with, but… clearly I didn't understand just how deeply the city ruined your manners. Anyone ever tell you to mind your own business?"

"My brother's death is my business."

"Sure. And you got closure. You saw the body, you saw the accident. There was a funeral and a scholarship named after him and plenty of programming around the county about the dangers of drinking and driving. What more do you want?"

"The truth!" Karen spat at her. "I know he didn't die in a drunk driving accident. There is more to the story and I deserve to know!"

The woman looked her up and down and sighed. "I suppose, since I'm going to kill you anyway," she said, wiping a frizzy curl from her forehead, "I can give you at least that. But take off your purse first, so I know you're not recording this. Put it on the floor, that's right."

 _Damn it,_ Karen thought as she reluctantly slipped her purse strap off her shoulder and placed it on the ground.

"Now take a few steps backwards," said the woman. She moved as Karen did, slowly and deliberately. She opened the window to the fire escape, picked up the bag, and placed it gently outside. She closed the window again with one hand. Watching her intensely, trying desperately to think of a way to get it back, Karen noticed a shock of black hair just barely within her vision. And as she stared, she saw Frank's face as he slowly climbed up the fire escape. Careful not to tip off her captor, Karen ripped her eyes away and back to the woman's face.

"Let's get into it, shall we?" She stood rigidly, and Karen thought she detected a slight tremor in her arms as she held the gun once more aimed at Karen's chest. "Your brother… _tsk tsk._ He was just in all the wrong places at the wrong times. Which wouldn't have been a problem, if he wasn't so annoyingly righteous. He was in the shop with his bicycle when a shipment came in. Saw some things that raised his eyebrows. He was in the locker room when some idiots pulled out a bag of fentanyl after a lacrosse game. He asked too many questions. My own son was his age, and never suspected a thing—or at least, _he_ knew better than to run his mouth."

Karen felt herself begin to shake with anger as the story unfolded, but clamped her tongue between her front teeth to keep from bursting out.

"By the time he came around Henshaw's again, I knew he had to be dealt with. Came in for an oil change, and started asking my husband and son all sorts of questions. My son played dumb, but my husband… I've always known he wasn't bright enough to handle a secret. I called my son into the office and acted like I needed him to fix the computer for me. Then I pulled my husband aside, and I told him to cut your brother's brake lines—just enough. Just enough for him to get home that day, just enough for another day or two of driving to let out enough brake fluid. Coming down Holly Lane that day, he tried to slow down and couldn't. Believe it or not, it was easier to convince the cops to call it a drunk driving accident than it was to convince my own husband, whose livelihood and whose rinky dink, shithole mechanic shop have thrived because of me."

"You were running drugs through the mechanic shop," Karen said finally. "Selling to high schoolers?"

She afforded herself a glance out her window. Frank was just beyond the window frame, where the woman could not see him. He nodded just barely at her. She wondered if he could hear them.

"No, Sherlock. The high schoolers were dispensing. Should they get caught, well… with no priors, a minor caught with fentanyl… I told them it wouldn't show up on their permanent records. The trick is to find the boys just smart enough to take orders, but too dumb to think critically about it. Unfortunately, even the dumb ones have friends like your brother."

"All those people knew—the cops, the mechanic, his friends? And no one did anything about it?"

"How dumb do you think I am, Page?" she asked, and Karen could just barely tell she was pressing the safety on her gun into the active position with a purple-painted nail. "Everyone was terrified that they'd end up in some kind of accident next. Then, after my own son died… well, everyone who suspected our family backed off to let us grieve. And, like you, we've been grieving for the last eight years."

Karen knew she was out of time, but took a shaky breath and tried to keep her talking. "You were right," she said. "You obviously know what you're doing. If you expanded to Hell's Kitchen, you could run the city. You could—"

"Ah ah ah. The reason I have been so successful is that I know how to keep everything reigned in. My operation is exactly the size that I want it, and I don't need some skinny bitch in the city who asks too many questions to start dispensing to her book club. Think of it this way, Miss Page. You'll see your brother soon."

A gunshot crashed through the window just as the woman uttered what she imagined would be the last words Karen ever heard. Shattered glass flew over her as she fell to the ground, and Karen couldn't tell at first whether she was hit or not. Regardless, she flew from the corner to behind the couch, peeking over the edge of it as Frank climbed through the now useless window and held a gun on the woman, who at this point was bleeding at the shoulder.

"You alright Karen?" he asked. She got up from behind the couch and joined him next to the woman, whose gun he had kicked toward the bedroom.

"I'm fine," she said. "Good timing."

"Lucky for you, she gave me the idea to record," he said.

"I'll thank you for not listening to me later," Karen said, staring down at the snarling soccer mom on the floor. Frank chuckled beside her.

"You wanna call the cops?" he asked. "Or do you think your neighbors already did?"

"I better," Karen said. She turned and reached through the broken window to retrieve her purse. Just as she turned back around, her door burst open to reveal Mr. Henshaw, who took one look at his wife on the floor and shot four wild shots into the wall and ceiling without aiming.

"You son of a bitch!" he screamed as he took the time to aim at Frank, who shoved Karen to the floor, where she pulled her own gun finally from her purse. The two stood locked, guns pointed at each other, and it was easy for Karen to aim and fire within seconds, hitting Henshaw's thigh and bringing him to the ground. As he fell, he fired a shot into the ceiling. Frank took three steps to him and yanked the gun out of his hand with ease. Karen slowly got up from the floor.

Karen and Frank looked at each other over the married couple bleeding on her floor, just as they heard the sirens round the corner onto their street.


End file.
